Onskad Fragrances '90 review

Onskad Fragrances 90’ image via the brand

There are perfume houses that exist because someone saw the potential of successfully monetizing a gap in the market. And then there are those that were born because someone simply had no other choice – because the dream was too present, for too many years, and the inner voice became too vivid and loud to ignore. And Onskad is undoubtedly of the second kind.

Born in Cannes, on the Croisette, that mythological stretch of Mediterranean coastline where cinema royalty walks and palace hotels have retained their original, unapologetic glamour, this house carries in its very name a declaration of intent. Onskad is Swedish, pronounced eun-skad, and it means the realization of a desire, the fulfillment of a dream. Which is, when you think about it, precisely what a great perfume does.

Virginie Dhoye, photo via the brand website

The founder and Creative Director, Virginie Dhoye, has been in love with perfume since the 90s, and in the decades since, that love has never once wavered, never once softened into something more reasonable or more manageable, but it only deepened, expanded, become more obsessive, more refined, more gloriously uncompromising. What she built with Onskad is the inevitable consequence of a woman who has spent decades knowing exactly what she wants and refusing to be talked out of it. She describes her perfumes as an OSNI – an Objet Sensuel Non Identifié, an Unidentified Sensual Object — and if that sounds like a provocation, it is CLEARLY meant to be one. The Rétrospective collection travels through the decades of feminine emancipation: the 30s, 50s, 80s, 90s, with each fragrance bottling a time capsule of a particular kind of audacity. Fashion Icon pays homage to three legends whose silhouettes you could recognize in shadow. The through line in both is the same: perfumery as portraiture, as power, as provocation. Virginie Dhoye lives by two lines that tell you everything you need to know about her: “I chose what I wanted to be, and I am it” and, perhaps, even more revealingly, “Wear perfume for the version of yourself you’d want to watch on replay.”

Camille Leguay, via the brand website

So when it came to creating Onskad 90′, the fragrance we will focus on today, she chose Camille Leguay, a perfumer whom Virginie calls “Olfactory screenwriter” and “olfactory fairy. Trained at ISIPCA in Versailles, formed at Mane, then moved to Chile and Mexico as a fragrance evaluator before returning to France to create for some of the industry’s most significant names (including her own), Camille brings to her work a rare combination of scientific rigour and something altogether less definable – intuition so acute that some of her answers come to her in dreams, dreams she has since come to realize were premonitory. She and Virginie share, beyond their obvious talent, a common obsession: both are seasoned, devoted, slightly unreasonable collectors of perfume. (of over 3000 bottles!)

Camille Leguay declares: “This project pulled me out of my comfort zone. Minimalism is my signature, but this time, I had to embrace excess. More wood, more fruit, more spice, more floral. I had to unlearn restraint to find balance again. But that’s what the ’90’s were about – giving in to too much, and loving every second of it.”

But before we talk about what’s inside the bottle, let us take a moment to appreciate the bottle itself, adorned with illustrations that feel like pages torn from the most beautiful women’s magazines of their respective decades. The talent behind these illustrations is Petra Dufkova — Czech-born, Munich-based, and a collaborator of Cartier, Guerlain, Hermès, Prada, Vogue, Elle and Vanity Fair, among others.

mood board for 90’, image via the brand

Anaïs Nin once wrote that “we don’t see things as they are – we see them as we are“. I’d extend that, without apology, to the way we smell things too. And spraying Onskad 90′ unveiled exactly that: a knot of nostalgia, that began to unfurl, layer after layer. A collage of pop-culture memories flies open, with scraps of brown lipstick, Seinfeld one liners, grunge plaid shirts, Beastie Boys’ Sabotage opening riffs, Pulp Fiction, Norton Commander bright blue screens, flowery dresses paired with knee-high laced boots, Trainspotting, the Twin Peaks red room, Kate Moss’s ribs, velvet scrunchies, the CK One ads. The particular shade of oxblood that colonized every lip, every nail, every mood board (done in the proper way with paper, glue and scissors). The Crow. The Cure. The Cranberries. The Corrs. The Spice Girls. The chokers. The platform shoes. The dial-up reverb in the speakers. That poster of Winona, forever my Winona. The everything-too-big or everything-too-small, never anything in between. And most of all – the goddesses of the time, the supermodels who projected that kind of 90’ confidence that felt almost… confrontational. Heroin chic and maximalism existing in the same breath, somehow.

AI mood collage made by Nicoleta

The 90s didn’t do subtle. And neither does this perfume. It opens with a bite, mandarin and bergamot arriving with the kind of powerful yellow mood that commands attention before you’ve even had a moment to prepare yourself. Soon, a plum-peach duo rolls in, spiced with cinnamon and cardamom, all hot-couture and freshly printed magazines taken out of their foil, and the whole thing takes on this gloriously fuzzy, velvet-dress texture that is so specifically 90’ I can almost taste its bubblegummy glory. Orange blossom and violet weave through the heart with a tongue-in-cheek retro confidence, and suddenly I’m thinking of Jean Paul Gaultier’s infamous pink corset, of hairspray and glossy-glossy lipstick and the particular kind of trouble that decade wore as a badge of honor.

Ylang Ylang, rose, jasmine and geranium add depth and a lush, almost excessive floralcy that never tips into sweetness – a flower bouquet both carnal and…carnivorous, a little dangerous, yet perfectly calibrated. Here we go now, roleplaying Uma Thurman in the yellow Kill Bill suit, zipper up, weapon drawn, whistling something cheerful on the way to absolute devastation. Another drawer of nostalgia opens up, with eyes half closed in hyper-focus, cutting my first pre-teen-Mia Wallace micro bangs in the fluorescent light of the bathroom. Girl, you’ll be a woman soon. A warm, woody base settles into a skin-close, almost narcotic softness that elevates everything, second skin, intimate – double layered with weaponized vulnerability, armor geared up out in the open. Tonka, vanilla and white musks are the olfactory equivalent of a vintage compact snapping shut in the drydown, snapping you back to reality.

AI mood photo by Nicoleta

Onskad 90′ is a visceral perfume, made by a red-blooded woman for all women alike. It’s not a demure fragrance that wins you over gradually, it’s an olfactive Rorschach test that will tell you everything you need to know about yourself, and rather quickly. A time capsule that doesn’t just sit quietly on the shelf; it radiates, sending waves outward in all directions, catching people mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-whatever-they-were-doing-before-you-walked-in. Sexy, deeply feminine, and unapologetically individualistic in the best possible way, this is perfumery that remembers exactly what it felt like to be alive and joyful in a decade that didn’t believe in half-measures.

Virginie, I’ll admit it: this is lust for life, bottled. Hats off! (or one can leave their hat on when wearing it, who are we to judge. )

Notes: Top: Mandarin, Bergamot, Middle: Cardamom, Ginger, Ylang Ylang Comores, Geranium Egypt, Rose, Jasmine Plum, Peach, Orange blossom accord, Base: Nutmeg, Ceylon cinnamon, Virginia cedar, Sandalwood, Ambroxan, Cashmeran, Powdery violet notes, Tonka, Vanilla, White musks

*18% concentration Edp

Nicoleta Tomsa, Senior Editor

Disclosure: A sample was kindly offered by the brand; opinions are always my own.

collage of Onskad Fragrances 90′ by Nicoleta

Thanks to the generosity of Onskad Fragrances, we have a 100ml bottle of 90’ for one registered reader from the EU or US. You must register or your entry will not count. To be eligible, please leave a comment saying what sparks your interest based on Nicoleta’s review and where you live. Draw closes 3/14/2026

Also check out the article on 30’

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